Making tracks to train show

One layout was a tribute to many of the area’s main steel mills.

By SEAN BARRON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

AUSTINTOWN — Since he was a child, Craig Ziobert found solace in watching trains.

Watching soon turned into a full-fledged interest, so it seems a natural fit that at age 17 he would become the youngest member of the Youngstown Model Railroad Association.

“I kept coming every year [since age 11] and learned that at age 16, I could become a [junior] member. The day I turned 16, I was a member,” Craig said, adding that he had a Lionel train set growing up.

The teen said he enjoys performing whatever duties are needed for the model train group, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a fall open house that kicked off Saturday at the former Four Mile Run Christian Church, 751 N. Four Mile Run Road. The event continues from noon to 6 p.m. today and next Saturday and Sunday.

The event’s first day attracted people of all ages who were drawn to two main displays, each of which featured O scale or smaller HO scale model trains, numerous layouts and more than 100 scale miles of track. Many of the layouts surrounding the tracks were replicas of buildings with a local connection.

Some people with a taste for the nostalgic probably gravitated toward the one showing a four-block area of downtown Youngstown as it looked in the late 1950s. The HO trains slowly meandered past facsimiles of the Tod Hotel, McCrory’s department store, Dollar Bank building, Palace Theater, Strouss building and Town Diner that was near Wick Avenue and Commerce Street.

Another layout designed by Ed Williams and Don Lakin paid homage to the area’s steel mills, with a replica of the Republic Steel plant and blast furnaces that were near the Center Street Bridge, as well as those of Sharon Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube.

Williams, a model railroad member and Wheatland Tube employee, said the replicas were also intended to illustrate the process of converting coke to iron. So far, the mill project has taken about four years to put together and is still being added to, he said.

Another area depicted a typical amusement park with a Ferris wheel, bumper cars and other rides.

Each section is operated by an overhead color-coded panel. Throttles control the trains’ speed and direction.

The upper level had throngs of the young and old alike watching the larger O scale cars slowly pass through tunnels and past layouts depicting rural farm scenes, mountains and lakes. Construction of that part began in the mid-1980s, with room for modifications, upgrades and other changes, noted Jim Pope, a 50-year association member.

“Everybody likes to see trains,” Pope noted.

One of the locomotives is equipped with a small camera that feeds to an overhead monitor an image giving people a sense of what it might feel like to be on the train, Pope added.

Dean DeMain, the group’s HO division vice president, said an interest in model trains has remained constant over the years. The O scale models’ popularity “took off after World War II” and continued through the late 1960s.

A courtesy donation of $3 is being requested to enter the event, and children under 12 with an adult are free. The Youngstown Model Railroad Association has about 42 junior and adult members. For more information, go to its Web site, www.youngstownmodelrailroadassn.org.